By Matt Proctor
Max Lucado tells of Mrs. Smith, an elderly widow who loved her parakeet Chippy. His songs brightened her lonely days.
One day while vacuuming, Mrs. Smith noticed Chippy”s cage was dirty. Opening the little door, she inserted her vacuum hose . . . when the phone rang. As she turned to pick up the phone, the hose shifted slightly and””slurp!””sucked poor Chippy down into the sweeper”s bowels.
Horrified, Mrs. Smith dropped the phone, tore open the sweeper bag, and dug through the dirt until she found the now-brown little feathered lump. Chippy wasn”t breathing, so she did the only thing she could think of””she rushed him to the bathroom faucet and shoved him under the rushing water. The parakeet sputtered back to life, but now freezing wet, her precious Chippy was drippy. Again she did the only thing that came to mind””she grabbed her hair dryer and blasted him with hot air.
Poor Chippy had now been sucked up, washed up, and blown up. At this point, he surely thought he had died and, for whatever reason, gone to the little birdie bad place. He had been through parakeet purgatory.
A few days later, a reporter dropped by to interview Mrs. Smith. He saw Chippy sitting on his perch, staring vacantly into space, and asked, “How is Chippy doing?”
Mrs. Smith replied, “Well, physically he seems fine. But he doesn”t sing much anymore.”
Sometimes life has a way of stealing your song.
Painful Melodies
Christmas is the season of music. Choirs fill our sanctuaries with the soaring strains of Handel”s Messiah. Carolers serenade us from the sidewalks. The mall pipes in joyful holiday tunes to put us in a buying mood. The music surrounds us, but to be honest, you don”t feel like singing.
Your boss says he is sorry, especially at this time of year, but he has to let you go.
The doctor has the results of your test back, and it”s positive for cancer.
The chair across the kitchen table where your wife sat for 53 years is now empty.
You just got back from visiting your son . . . in jail.
Sometimes life can steal your song, and for those who are suffering, the music of the Christmas season can be painful, even taunting. Everyone seems so happy, but for you it is not “the most wonderful time of the year.” If you”re experiencing what John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul,” may I suggest a different kind of carol you might consider? The psalms of lament.
A Different Kind of Song
The Psalms, of course, were ancient Israel”s hymnbook. Scholars sort out the psalms into various categories: wisdom psalms, psalms of confession, psalms of trust. But by far the most common type of psalm is called the lament. Philip Yancey once wrote a best-selling book entitled Disappointment with God, echoing what these “psalms of suffering” expressed centuries before. Listen to a few of the lyrics:
“Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1).
“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?” (Psalm 13:1, 2).
“Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever. Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?” (Psalm 44:23, 24).
Have you ever felt like that? Like God has abandoned you? Perhaps this Christmas you feel alone in your suffering””like God could”ve intervened in your crisis, but didn”t. If so, the psalms of lament were written for you.
To be honest, when we first hear these psalms, we might think they are dangerously disrespectful to God. The psalmists are so brash, even rude. You”re not supposed to shake your fist at God like that, are you? Isn”t this somehow wrong? Apparently the answer is no. God included these prayers in his Word.
He Wants to Know How You Really Feel
A poet once asked, “Will you accept my prayers, Lord, my real prayers, rooted in the muck and mud of my life and not just the pretty, cut-flower, gracefully arranged bouquet of words?”
The answer is yes””God does accept our real prayers. He included these psalms in his Bible because he wants us to know that he is big enough to handle our anger with him. Our lament is not going to shake his world or cause him to question himself. God is not going to have a faith crisis. So pray your disappointment honestly.
In fact, directing our “complaining” to God is actually an act of trust. Christian counselor Dan Allender writes, “To whom do you vocalize your most intense, irrational anger? Would you do so with someone who could fire you or cast you out of a cherished position or relationship? No. You don”t trust them””you don”t believe they would endure the depths of your disappointment and confusion. The person who hears your lament and far more bears your lament against them, paradoxically, is someone you deeply, wildly trust. The language of lament is oddly the shadow side of faith.”
The reason you bring your complaints to God is because you somehow still believe he cares about you. To sing such a lament can be a profound act of trust.
You”re Not Alone
But if you”re hurting this Christmas season, singing a lament can also be an act of healing. God included these songs of suffering in Scripture so you would know you”re not alone. Saints through the ages have struggled with feeling like God has abandoned them.
After his wife died, C. S. Lewis said it felt like God had slammed the door in his face “and after that, silence.” Overwhelmed at one point by the seeming absence of God, Mother Teresa wrote, “The silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.”
Ever since the psalms were written, God”s people have sung the laments, wrestling with feelings of abandonment, and there is a certain kind of comfort in knowing you”re not alone in your disappointment. Sometimes that”s all you need to get through hard times””someone to share your pain.
As a guy, I did not always understand this. To be clear, I think it”s great to be a guy: You can open all your own jars. Phone conversations last 30 seconds. You can watch a game in silence for hours with your buddy and never once think, He must be mad at me.
But my male instincts don”t always serve me well. My wife may tell me of a situation that is troubling her, pouring out her heart, and my immediate reaction is to help her fix it: “Well, here”s what you need to do . . .” Then Katie explains that she was looking for empathy more than action steps””someone to understand more than a solution to implement.
Sometimes we don”t need someone to fix our problem as much as simply to feel our problem. In Romans 12, Paul didn”t say, “When people are suffering, give them options for improvement.” Instead he wrote, “Mourn with those who mourn” (v. 15). When Job suffered tragedy, his three friends came, tore their robes, and sat in silence on the ground with him for seven days. When they finally began to speak, their advice was foolish, but their decision to enter his pain””that was brilliant.
In fact, the Jewish community still has a custom called sitting shiva, which literally means “sitting sevens.” When someone in the Jewish community loses a loved one, friends will come over the course of a week and sit shiva with the one mourning””not offering advice or mouthing platitudes, just suffering with them.
These lament psalms provide a kind of healing in knowing that others have felt your pain. Other saints have shared your struggle. You”re not alone.
Why the Lament Psalms Lead to Christmas
But what”s most amazing is this: God himself has been where you are. He has shared your struggle. That”s what the psalmists longed for most. They wanted God to feel their pain and to somehow save them: “Rise up and help us; redeem us because of your unfailing love” (Psalm 44:26).
So you”re beginning to see: Christmas is God”s answer to our lament. The Incarnation is God”s way of sitting shiva. In the person of Jesus, he entered into our suffering, experiencing all the grief and despair and woundedness of being human. The little baby in the manger was God becoming man, signing up for all the pain that life on this planet entails. He did not remain detached, aloof. As theologian Karl Barth said, “God would rather be the suffering God of a suffering people, than the blest God of an unblest people.” He has heard your plaintive prayer, and on that silent night so long ago, he answered.
Same, Same
My 5-year-old, Carl, and my 3-year-old, Conrad, love it when I dress like them. After they put on jeans and a blue T-shirt, they”ll come ask me to wear jeans and a blue T-shirt. When I do, they have a saying. They will survey me, survey themselves, and say, “Look, Dad: same, same.” For my birthday, Carl bought me a North Carolina blue mesh shirt . . . because he has a North Carolina blue mesh shirt. We could be “same, same.”
When I play living room football with my boys, Conrad will not let me play standing””so big and scary and towering above him. The theological term for this is “completely Other.” Instead he insists I get on my knees. When I am down at eye-level, Conrad puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “There. See, Dad””same, same.” They like it when I enter their world.
(To be honest, it”s not that hard because I mostly do life at a grade-school level. When I laugh like a fourth-grader at my little boys” burping, my wife shakes her head and mutters, “Same, same.”)
This summer, I scraped my leg working on my house. When Conrad fell down and scraped his leg, he pointed at my scab, then showed me his and said, “Hey, Dad””same, same.”
Here”s the point: these lament psalms remind us that God himself has felt what we feel. In the Incarnation, he chose not to stay “completely Other.” He got down at eye-level, and in the Incarnation, God experienced what it”s like to be tired and discouraged, to feel abandoned and betrayed. He knows what it”s like to hurt and bleed. On the cross, Jesus himself prayed a psalm of lament: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1).
In your pain, you may be tempted to say, “God, you have no idea what I”m going through. You have no idea how bad I”m hurting.” But God can respond, “Yes, I do.” He can point to your wounds and then to his own and say, “Look: same, same. Me too. I have entered your world, and I know how you feel. I have been there, I am with you now, I care, and I can help.” That is what Christmas is all about.
So if life has stolen your song this season, my suggestion is this: turn to the psalms of lament and begin singing there. As you do, you may slowly realize that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15). You may begin to remember that we have a God who has heard our cry and entered this “vale of tears,” so that he might offer us redemption and rescue, healing and hope.
And who knows? Eventually, you might just find yourself humming “Joy to the World.”
Matt Proctor serves as president of Ozark Christian College, Joplin, Missouri.
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